Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 20: 20: Clause 5, page 4, line 10, leave out ““15(1)”” and insert ““15”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 52. In my previous amendment, I sought to amend Clause 5 so that payments could be made to a pensions lifeboat, which is a specific example of something that could be funded from dormant account money. With these two amendments, I am seeking to allow money to flow through bodies other than the Big Lottery Fund. Amendment No. 20 is a small, paving amendment, but the meat is found in Amendment No. 52, which would alter Clause 15, which sets up distribution of funds only via the Big Lottery Fund. My amendment would allow the Secretary of State to specify the body or bodies to which a reclaim fund should transfer money. That money would still have to be transferred for social or environmental purposes, so the purposes for which money could be spent would not be changed. The mechanism or the distribution channel would be changed. That mechanism would be an order requiring the approval of both Houses. It is clearly a significant issue that should be brought for parliamentary approval. The order could specify the bodies to which the money was to be transferred and how the money was then to be distributed. It could specify particular sums to be transferred to a particular body or say that money could be transferred to the bodies only if certain levels of money or thresholds had been met. This could be important if, for example, the Government wanted to specify a transfer to the lifeboat fund—I do not detect any enthusiasm for that—but not until, let us say, £150 million already had been distributed for youth purposes. My amendment would allow some flexibility in how money could flow and transfers to be time limited. If, or to the extent that, the Government had not specified particular bodies under new subsection (1A), new subsection (1B) would require the money to flow to the Big Lottery Fund. The scheme would then operate under Part 2 exactly as the Government have drafted it. The advantage of drafting the Bill in this way is that it would allow the Government to specify that money should go for national purposes. The scheme of distribution via the Big Lottery Fund is predicated on sharing money out among the individual countries, with spending priorities set by those countries. That simply does not allow for money to be spent on things which cross our internal borders in the UK. One example is the lifeboat, because, clearly, pensions are a national issue which could not be addressed through the devolved Administrations without ending up with a curious result of different pensions being paid in different parts of the UK. There will be other examples related to functions which operate on the national dimension. The noble Lord, Lord Newby cited one, international aid, which would not easily flow out of how the Big Lottery Fund is structured but may well be a proper priority. Another example that I want to press on noble Lords is the Armed Forces and the ability to provide additional support to our servicemen and their families. This may not fit well within a distribution system that is not focused at national level. The Bill means that national causes will almost inevitably be bypassed. One of the main reasons for seeking flexibility in distribution outside the Big Lottery Fund is that the scheme may well realise far greater sums than have been estimated by the British Bankers’ Association and the Building Societies Association, which have referred to sums of £400 million to £500 million initially, dropping down to possibly £10 million a year. As we discussed at Second Reading, estimates based on the Irish experience lead to very much higher sums. It was the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, who said—probably about 63 times—we are talking about billions, my Lords, billions. If we are talking about a sum of around £20 billion, we are talking about a sum of an order of magnitude such that it should not be pushed through the Big Lottery Fund. There ought to be another mechanism in the Bill for dealing with money in another way. The Government have steadfastly refused to discuss figures and have given the impression of not having the faintest idea of how much is involved. For example, the Minister during the Second Reading debate said: "““Of course we are vague about the figures””." That was some form of boast, I think. He went on to say, "““I cannot talk about categorical figures at this stage and I do not think that it is reasonable that we should do so””.—[Official Report, 21/11/07; cols. 896-7.]" It is quite clear that that means, ““not the faintest idea””. By saying that they cannot estimate how much money is involved, the Government cannot avoid the fact that they are setting up a system on the basis that it could be handling anything from low tens, or perhaps low hundreds, of millions up to many thousands of millions—billions of pounds. The distribution structure should be robust in the face of potentially very variable outcomes. The amendment does not threaten the Big Lottery Fund as a distributor. I shall leave that to my noble friends, who have a series of penetrating amendments to which we shall doubtless come on our next day in Committee. In this amendment I am simply seeking greater flexibility and the ability to direct money on much broader fronts than the scheme is currently set up for. I beg to move.